The stadium sound system played the Star Wars theme as fifteen men set off in the world 5,000 metres final in Paris on 31 August 2003. Somebody had chosen suitable music for a showdown. Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele, newly crowned world champion at 10,000 metres, went to the front. Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj, four days removed from winning the 1,500, followed him. The teenager settling into third had already lost to two men in this field at the Kenyan trials alone.

The Kenyan who slowed the race down

Eliud Kipchoge was eighteen, which did not make him an innocent abroad. Earlier that year he had won the world junior cross-country title in Lausanne. In Oslo he had run a world junior record of 12 minutes 52.61 seconds for 5,000 metres. The awkward detail for anyone tipping him in Paris was what had happened at home. Abraham Chebii and John Kibowen had both beaten him at the trials. Kenya had effectively submitted a shortlist with Kipchoge in third place.

Bekele took the first kilometre through in 2:31.94. It was an intelligent piece of aggression. The Ethiopian had every reason to stretch the 1,500 metres specialist over a longer distance before the Moroccan could use his finishing speed. After three kilometres Bekele had the field moving at 7:45.44. Then Kipchoge took over. Anybody expecting the young man to impress the adults by going faster had misread the situation.

The fourth kilometre took 2:43.02, nearly five seconds slower than the third. From the stands, going to the front looks like assuming responsibility for keeping a race fast. In practice the man in front gets considerable say over how slowly everyone runs until somebody objects. With about 900 metres remaining, El Guerrouj did. He moved up and began winding the pace back up. His next full circuit took less than a minute.

The two metres that stopped growing

At the bell, Kibowen and Chebii began to drop away. With half a lap left El Guerrouj had about two metres on Kipchoge, and Bekele was just behind the Kenyan. In a sprint against the world record holder for the mile, two metres sounds like the beginning of a perfectly respectable silver medal. Kipchoge later explained that with 300 metres to go, getting a medal was still what he had in mind.

The crucial observation came with about seventy metres left. The gap had stopped growing. On the bend Kipchoge had moved outside El Guerrouj into lane two. Bekele tried to close from wider still. Watch the finish and the familiar marathon runner almost disappears. Kipchoge’s head rocks with the effort, and he throws his upper body forward at the line. After twelve and a half laps, a sprinter’s dip earns him four hundredths of a second.

The official times were 12:52.79 for Kipchoge and 12:52.83 for El Guerrouj. Here is the lovely technicality buried in the figures. Kipchoge had run slightly faster in Oslo when he set his junior record. In Paris, a slower time made him senior world champion. What he had improved most effectively was his position relative to the right two people on the right afternoon.

At the Athens Olympics a year later the same three men occupied the podium, in a different order. El Guerrouj took gold, Bekele silver and Kipchoge bronze. Paris had offered a very narrow window. At 300 metres the Kenyan teenager did not yet know it was open. At seventy he had seen enough.